Welcome to Where to Wander, our selection of the best under-the-radar destinations in 2025. To see more surprising sites around the world that have fewer tourists and more locals, check out all of Atlas Obscura’s favorite places to travel this year.
Much like moths, humans are attracted to things that glitter and glow. Sometimes, a shimmering show comes courtesy of nature, via underground caverns filled with fluorescent rocks and bioluminescent algae setting seawater alight. Humans are also no slouch when it comes to creating art with light. Artists around the world have created soulful, glimmering works, while others have collected the neon signs of yesteryear, to demonstrate how even crassly commercial advertisements can take on their own beauty—especially when they are made out of light.
The Sterling Hill Mining Museum is home to the largest public collection of fluorescent rocks in the world. The museum was opened by brothers Richard and Robert Hauck in 1990, in the shuttered Sterling Hill zinc mine, which had closed three years earlier. The mine was one of the oldest in the United States and began operation around 1739. Over its lifespan, it produced more than 11 million tons of zinc ore.
Today the mine welcomes thousands of visitors into its depths each year to witness, among other things, its striking collection of more than 700 fluorescent objects, all able to glow under ultraviolet light, X-rays, or electron beams.
The most breathtaking nocturnal sight in Emas National Park in Brazil is a series of glowing termite mounds. These mounds can grow quite large, with diameters up to 100 feet and towers reaching heights of 23 feet or more. Not only do they provide a home for up to several million termites, they also host hundreds of glowing Pyrophorus beetle larvae. At night, the termite mounds look like they’re wrapped in Christmas lights. The Pyrophorus nyctophanus beetle (also known as the Headlight Beetle) is bioluminescent as an adult, but it’s the larvae that truly shine. Adult beetles lay their eggs in the sides of termite mounds. When the young hatch, they glow with a green light bright enough to read by.
God’s Own Junkyard is a kaleidoscopic warehouse-maze of handmade neon signs that blazes forth in an old industrial estate. Curated by third-generation neon artisan Marcus Bracey, it serves many functions: free art gallery and Instagram bonanza for the public, dealer and recycler of signage for businesses, prop shop for film and photo shoots, and lucrative customer for the local electric utility.
Cheerful emblems for diners and hotels, signage for every form of disreputable fun, and neon-trimmed religious images crowd together on the walls. The collection includes thousands of signs, props, and figures, all displayed within a single warehouse space.
Watasenia scintillans, or the Firefly Squid, is only three inches long, but packs a stunning feature in that small package. At the end of their tentacles are special organs called photophores that light up like glow sticks at a rave. In the Toyama Bay, in the central Japan Sea, the squid are found in fantastic abundance. While the squid normally lives at 1,200 feet underwater, a V-shaped canyon in Toyama Bay pushes the current, and the creature, to the surface in massive numbers that turn the bay into a writhing, gleaming blue froth. Sightseeing boats depart from the Namerikawa fishing port around 3 a.m. to see the nets about one or two kilometers offshore.
The Blue Cave, Modra špilja, is located at the Balun Cove on the eastern side of the Croatian island of Bisevo. Though fishermen have known of the cave since ancient times, it wasn’t until 1884 that a (relatively) easy entrance was blasted out with dynamite. Before this small hole in the side of the rock was opened, the only entrance into the cave was to dive underneath the rock wall in just the right spot.
The cave is at its most beautiful between 11:00 and noon on a sunny day. The bright blue glowing effect is created when the sun’s rays enter through the water and reflect off the limestone floor of the cave. The bright sun lights up the water, painting the cave walls a brilliant blue and creating a glowing grotto.
Owned and operated by artist Nick Padalino, Electric Ladyland is a museum focusing solely on the magic of fluorescent light. On entering the basement exhibit, visitors are surrounded by bulbous, otherworldly shapes. When the black light comes on, the homemade shapes spring to life as every surface glows with a neon florescence. Patrons are encouraged to explore the psychedelic space at their own pace, in what the owners call “participatory art.”
While the main attraction is the experiential room, the museum also features a large collection of rocks and other elements that naturally react to UV light. The glass case full of dull gray stones explodes with flecks of electric color under the black light.
Legend has it that Prometheus the Titan managed to annoy the god Zeus by stealing fire from the gods for man. As a result, Zeus ordered his servants to seize Prometheus, take him to the Caucasus Mountains, and chain him to a rock, where a giant bird would peck at his liver.
Some say that the rock Prometheus was chained to is within this cave (although it is certainly not the only cave with this claim). The inside boasts a wonderful array of stalactites, stalagmites, petrified waterfalls, cave pearls, underground rivers, and lakes. A boat tour on one of the underground rivers is also on offer.
The cave provides a rather pleasant walk and is spectacularly neon-lit. But if you go in winter, beware: Bears and foxes have been known to hibernate here during the colder months.
Most disused industrial sites are either seen as a dangerous eyesore and torn down, or they are fenced off and hidden away. But the former steel works currently known as the Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord is now a public park in Duisburg, Germany, that celebrates the site’s brutal beauty and productive heritage.
The coal works were first established in 1901 to take advantage of the fields of ore on the site. More coal, iron, and steel facilities were added down the decades, until the site was a fully functioning plant complex. As demand for steel dipped in the later 20th century, the factory was eventually abandoned in the mid-’80s, leaving behind an ominous industrial hulk and immense amounts of pollution.
However, instead of blasting the land clean of the forsaken metal works, it was decided that the facilities would be refurbished and turned into a public park. Today, the neon light show that appears after dark paints the otherwise hard-edged, grim site into a sort of sci-fi fantasia.
At night, an eerie ethereal light illuminates Mosquito Bay, located on the south side of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. The light in Mosquito Bay is created by tiny organisms called dinoflagellates (specifically Pyrodinium bahamense or “swirling fire”). Mosquito Bay, also known as Bahía Bioluminiscente, contains an astonishing number of them—roughly 700,000 per gallon of water. Although they’re microscopic, the effective size of the light they give off is 100 times larger than their own bodies, and in great numbers they light up like an underwater aurora borealis.
Visitors are asked not to swim in the water, as it threatens the delicate balance of the ecosystem, and to not wear bug spray, as it can kill dinoflagellates.
Drowned railroad tracks lead to an abandoned passageway nearly lost within a cascade of leafy greenery. Inside, an enchanting blue glow illuminates the dark, dank tunnel. This underground passage was built in the 1880s, but closed in 1915 after years of soot and smoke built up within the space and made it dangerous to pass through. The ends became blocked up, and the tunnel filled with stagnant water. A colony of glowworms—one of the largest in all of New South Wales—moved in and made its home on the roof. The insects illuminate the stale, inky air like a constellation of blue-green stars.
People pass through the small waterfall that often tumbles across the entrance after heavy rains with pool floats or inflatable canoes in hand. They then paddle deep into the darkness until they reach the spots where the ceiling becomes brightest with the soft glow of the bioluminescent bugs.
